Toy Trucks Build #1: Day 1 - Basic Milling of Chassis

We have two young grandsons, Chance (almost 3) and Jaylan (6). I’ve decided to build a couple of toy trucks for them. For this project I’m using the truck featured in WoodSmith No 35 (Oct 84). Here’s a picture of the truck as featured in the magazine:

Today I selected a piece of cypress to use to make the chassis of the trucks. The piece was rough sawn and 5/4 thickness. I used my Ridgid planer to surface the board and planed it down to 13/16” thickness.

The planer does a great job but generates a lot of chips. I use this separator I made using a ShopNotes design to catch the chips and save my vacuum cleaner.

Once the board was the right thickness, I cut the pieces to rough length and width. I wound up with enough to make four chassis pieces. I ran them through the planer on edge to plane them down to the exact width (2 1/4”).

The next step is to finish milling the chassis pieces. But first I have to build a small sled for my table saw…